University of Washington department of biostatistics

Abstract

The Departments of Biostatistics and Statistics at the University of Washington both had their origins in the interdisciplinary Biomathematics Group established during the early 1960s. During his tenure as Biostatistics Chair (1973-1983), Donovan Thompson developed the department into a major national resource, recruiting many of its current senior faculty and establishing important relationships with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Group Health Cooperative. The curriculum combines rigorous training in statistical theory with applications to biomedicine and public health. The department faculty have played a major role in the development of statistical methods in epidemiology, clinical trials, and genomics. The department graduates are highly valued and many have achieved leadership positions as heads of academic departments and government research units or as founders of corporations. Recent recruitment of outstanding junior faculty bodes well for maintenance of the department's national prominence as Biostatistics focuses increasingly on high-dimensional data produced by the genomics revolution.